"Bull Eclogues": "The Cave"

"Bull Eclogues" is a sequence of poems I am writing, in the voice of a Ted Haggard-inspired speaker. The central conceit is to compare Haggard to Pasiphae, the Cretan queen who fell in love with a bull. I've completely rewritten Poem Six, which covers his outing by the sex worker.


The Cave

To be found out sounds like a sharp relief,
for godless enemies, and not for me,
a wide primetime report--ripping sheets
off private beds--of public sentencing.

Or else it sounds like holy disbelief,
confusion in the ranks, complicity,
on stony floors the awkward scrape of seats
pushed back, the quiet airconditioning.

At home it makes a smaller sound, like grief.
The click of a light switch. No mercy
in the darkness or the light the house repeats,

but hiding for a time, however brief,
in me, as in my den, I hear the plea
of an unfired bullet in the drawer firing.

*

Comments

Anonymous said…
This replace "The God"?
Jee Leong said…
Nothing can replace god, but this may be a good substitute.
Eric Norris said…
Nothing can replace god. [full stop]

Now, I think there may be an abyss hiding in that statement worth looking into...
Jee Leong said…
That abyss is now routinely skirted round.
Anonymous said…
"Nothing can replace God" is wonderfully ambiguous.
For the Christian=affirmation of God.
For Nietzche=affirmation of nothingness.

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